I live in Los Angeles and I'm lucky enough to write about the thing I love most: movies. I'm a graduate of Vassar College and Northwestern University and for 15 years I worked at Forbes mostly covering the entertainment industry. Although I've moved into the world of corporate journalism, I still contribute blog posts here.

Seth MacFarlane Gets Serious

Seth MacFarlane came in 74th on this year’s Celebrity 100 by making people laugh. But sitting in a booth at the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills, the 38-year-old creator of the hit Fox cartoon Family Guy is surprisingly distracted by the cackles emanating from a nearby table. “What I wouldn’t give for a sack of manure,” he says in a dead-on Woody Allen impersonation.

Usually it’s MacFarlane who is getting the yucks. His ­animation empire, which includes American Dad and The Cleveland Show, generates more ad revenue for Fox than the venerable Simpsons. (All four shows are bundled on Sunday night for what Fox accurately calls Animation ­Domination.) Family Guy alone has earned more than $200 million for Fox.

MacFarlane’s sense of humor spares no sacred cows—abortion, diarrhea and matricide represent some of his lighter fare. A typical gag: Stephen Hawking having sex with his similarly disabled wife. The biggest part of MacFarlane’s genius, however, might be his business model. As the creators of the The Simpsons have learned over the past 20 years, channeling racy humor through the prism of animation means the cast never has to age, and MacFarlane is able to keep an outsize share of the profits—$36 million over the past 12 months, FORBES estimates—for himself.

The son of a teacher, MacFarlane drew cartoons from the age of 2. He studied animation at the Rhode Island School of Design and worked on cartoons like Johnny Bravo until 1999 when Fox picked up Family Guy. The rise and fall and rise of the show about a clan from Quahog is now the stuff of Hollywood legend. After getting a big post-Super Bowl push, Family Guy failed to find a large audience. It didn’t help that Fox repeatedly changed the night it aired. After two seasons the network gave up on the show.

But not on MacFarlane. He started developing his second show, American Dad. Meanwhile, Family Guy started to attract a large fan base on DVD and in reruns. In 2005 Fox made the surprising decision to bring the show back. The first new episode attracted 11 million viewers, and a hit was reborn. The Cleveland Show, launched in 2009, gave MacFarlane a cartoon troika on Sundays with the Simpsons as his formidable lead-in.

This year MacFarlane is trying to leverage his TV animation success in new areas. His first movie project, Ted, hits theaters this July. The $65 million film, which MacFarlane wrote, directed and kind of stars in, is not a huge departure from his Family Guy brand of humor. It tells the story of a man (Mark Wahlberg) whose teddy bear came to life when he was a child, with the two still living together as cursing, dope-smoking best buds. MacFarlane voiced Ted and acted the role using motion capture technology. “A character like Ted couldn’t be on TV,” says MacFarlane.

His second initiative is further out there, at least for him. The man who never met a toilet or sex joke he didn’t like is deeply concerned that the U.S. has lost its passion for science. No one seems to care about the space program. Evolution has somehow become a debatable fact. “The resistance to science is idiotic,” says MacFarlane, sipping on a coffee that he declares way too fancy. “Those people shouldn’t be allowed to have antibiotics. Give us back your TVs and the dentures.” But MacFarlane is serious, putting his money and his clout with Fox, where his mouth is. Fox plans to air a reboot of the 1980s PBS science show Cosmos, one of the most popular and least hip programs ever made. MacFarlane is also spending his money to help get late Cosmos host Carl Sagan’s substantial collections of letters, notes and drawings into the Library of Congress. “I never met Carl Sagan, but this is my way to give something back to him for all of the things he gave to me,” says MacFarlane.

MacFarlane’s path to Cosmos started with the Science & Entertainment Exchange, an organization set up by Airplane director Jerry Zucker to help Hollywood work with scientists to ensure shows like CSI are factually correct. Through the group he met the famous astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson. “He said he was going to host Cosmos, and he was trying to sell the show to a cable science network,” says MacFarlane. “I said, ‘Let me take you into Fox and we’ll see what happens.’”

Fox might seem like a strange network to host a reboot of Cosmos. The show was one of the most popular ever on PBS, but much of its success depended on viewers buying into Sagan’s poetic vision of space as the exhilarating new frontier for exploration. Not exactly the kind of show you’d expect on a network dominated by shows like American Idol and MacFarlane’s naughty cartoons. “It’s not going to be the biggest money earner,” admits Kevin Reilly, head of entertainment at Fox Networks. “But it could have a cultural impact.”

Ann Druyan, Sagan’s widow and the force behind the new Cosmos, says that the network has agreed to make the show using cutting-edge visual technology (the original was one of the first to use green screens) and is letting her have control over the content of the show. “Seth was already a hero in our household because of Family Guy,” says Druyan, who has two sons. “I knew he would be someone with a skeptical nature and an impatience with superstition and nonsense.”

Perhaps in penance, the king of animated lowbrow hopes the show will help inspire better programming on TV. “The trend today is vampires, zombies, angels, all the stuff that puts me right to sleep,” says MacFarlane. “It’s too bad because it’s so much less interesting than the diversity of stories you can tell with science.”

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Wow, first of all … I’m a South Park man. Nuff said. Next, Neil De Grasse Tyson is a toxic personal belief pusher. He’s an Atheist with an agenda. As an agnostic, I loathe anyone who wants to push their belief on the masses; particularly when they do it with subterfuge—ie in the guise of ‘educational’ program. This is a man who bristles and convulses at the mere mention of the word ‘faith’. To put him in the shoes of Sagan, a graceful atheist who was able to keep faith or the lack of it out of the discussion, would be an abomination. And just because Sagan’s widow agrees, doesn’t mean Sagan himself would have. Both Tyson and MacFarlane are militant atheists bent on forcing the world to see things their way. Sagan was more concerned with illuminating us to the wonders of the universe. Anyone who organizes gatherings where atheist egg heads try to plot out how science can extinguish religion… aka thought control… shouldn’t be involved in Sagan’s second act. Very sad.

You seriously made me loose faith in humanity. I have died a little inside because of reading your comment. Please see this video for your own sake. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzSMC5rWvos&list=FLsHcpe-Ea5mN-lczAftE9YQ&index=64&feature=plpp_video You apparently know nothing of Neil deGrasse Tyson and and what he’s out to do, and also know nothing of what Carl Sagan would have wanted… Carl Sagan would have absolutely been thrilled with a sequel to his work because the only thing he wants is to see an augmentation of scientific literacy in the USA and in other countries. Neil is out to do the same thing but in an age were NASA awareness is at an all time low. In no way whatsoever is Mr Tyson too eccentric in what he does. If you think any differently please don’t get frustrated and look up your info because it’s dead wrong.

South Park? The same joke over and over. Tell me, does Cartman still make jew jokes? Are they still picking on Butters? Is Stan still telling you the moral of the episode? I would rather take the silly random nature of Family Guy than South Park doing the same show over and over, and so does the rest of America.

Matt and Trey are just bitter because Seth is richer and his movie has made more money than Matt and Trey’s Orgazmo, Team America, Baseketball and South Park the movie combined.

Wow. That is just about the best way to describe your atrosious rant. Not only is it a rant, its a self rightious rant. Neil Degrasse Tyson is an athiest…..thats just about all you have correct. Im not quite sure where you are even coming from. I have seen most if not all of his speeches/talk/interviews and what have you. In none of them is he forcing atheism on the religious. He is directly asked questions about religion and responds, nothing more, nothing less. Before Richard Dawkins and Neil Degrasse Tyson became friends he actually criticized Dawkins for his blunt/staunch approach to atheism. You are illinformed and spewing fallicious statements and in doing altering peoples views of an extremely intellectual human beinge heard him pressure is the idea that we should invest in NASA therefore helping our country as whole by increasing innovation which inturn stimulates the economy. Do your research before posting a bunch crap.